NRA gets little bang for big bucks

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WASHINGTON The NRA fired mostly blanks in the 2012 election, spending $3.4 million to oppose Democrats who won six key Senate races.

The NRA's Political Action Committee and its Institute for Legislative Action also spent $11.7 million supporting defeated former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney and opposing President Barack Obama, according to campaign finance data for the 2012 election cycle compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics and its Website,
opensecrets.org.

In all, the National Rifle Association spent more than $17 million on the 2012 presidential and congressional contests, $11.9 million specifically in opposition to Democrats and $5.4 in support of Republicans, according to opensecrets.org.

The $3.4 million in the Senate races was targeted at three Democratic incumbents – Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bill Nelson of Florida, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri – and three Democratic competitors for open seats – Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Chris Murphy of Connecticut. All six won their races against Republicans.

With a membership of 4.3 million gun owners and gun-rights supporters, the NRA has long enjoyed a reputation as an influential lobbying group with enough clout to doom lawmakers from red states who oppose their agenda.

“It shows their influence over elections is a myth,” said Brian Malte, political director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “Right now, it's important to see that the NRA is ineffective, and if you're a politician weighing a vote and thinking ‘the NRA can take me out,' well, they don't have a very good track record.”

NRA director of public affairs Andrew Arulanandam did not return several requests for comment.

Not all the NRA's political expenditures were for naught. Opensecrets.org's tabulations of Federal Election Commission data showed the organization spent $489,000 on Republicans who won Senate seats – Jeff Flake in Arizona, Orrin Hatch in Utah and Dean Heller in Nevada.

In addition, the NRA spent $61,365 to defeat Shelley Berkley, the Democrat opposing Heller in Nevada, and $1,651 against Bob Kerrey, former Nebraska governor and senator who lost to Republican Deb Fischer.

The NRA also supported 36 House Republicans who won their races and even a few Democrats including Rep. Bill Owens of New York, who won re-election in a district near the Canadian border.

Over the course of Obama's first term, the NRA sounded alarms among gun owners over the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' dubious Operation Fast and Furious, and its requirement last year that firearms dealers in U.S.-Mexico border states report multiple sales of certain types of semi-automatic rifles.

But gun issues hardly came up in the drawn-out presidential campaign. During the town hall-style debate last month in Hempstead, N.Y., one questioner asked the candidates what they'd do to limit the availability of AK-47s and other military-style weapons.

While Romney reiterated support of Second Amendment rights and took a shot at Obama over Operation Fast and Furious, the president talked about instilling a “broader conversation” on guns and seeing “if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced.”

The NRA used Obama's comment to amp up its message of support for Romney through its network of 25 paid organizers deployed to 13 states including battlegrounds such as Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Wisconsin, Virginia and Nevada.

The election results notwithstanding, some experts questioned the extent to which the NRA's influence on Capitol Hill will be compromised.

“They're much more of a retail operation than a wholesale one,” said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University. “Their influence is most pronounced in legislation, not elections. Their money turns out to be small potatoes compared to the Super PACs.

“But if legislation on assault rifles or the size of ammunition clips comes up in Congress, they generally get their way.”

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